Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
One thing seems to be clear, for an terrorist action or insurgency to work it has to have two components: the first is the fighters who are willing to kill military and innocents alike in order to undermine whatever authority is currently in power, and a "legitimate" component that is works within the accepted political framework to offer a "solution" to the problems.
Wouldn't that depend upon their goal? A criminal organization may conduct terrorism to effect state capture (yes that is a political objective) to facilitate their criminal/economic activity. They don't require a legitimate framework to achieve their goals, they simply need to coerce the government and population. IS on the other hand used terrorism to establish territorial control and establish control of the population. If we really stretch our imagination we could call their government structure legitimate, but I'll pass on that.

One also needs to describe effective in a temporal context. I recall similar voices that Assad's government would fail years ago, that ISIS would collapse upon itself, etc. That may all prove to be true, but for now their versions of terrorism has worked to achieve their goals. The USSR used terrorism to control their population, it took over 50 years for their political system to collapse.

We Americans tend to have a nave view of the world based on how we perceive our history, and our so called natural and universal laws. The real world can be quite rough, and rough works when you're the roughest. It may or may not result in an enduring solution, but history speaks for itself if we would only listen. Fortunately we have a system in place that at least currently prevents control of the populace and government through terrorist tactics, but that truth doesn't apply everywhere in the world.